H. L. Mencken Quotes

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

H. L. Mencken

I used to build up to sensation, accumulating tension until it released a perceptual experience.

H. L. Mencken

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

H. L. Mencken

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

H. L. Mencken

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."